A storm has descended on millions of minority Americans. The Supreme Court’s affirmative action ban has ripped away their hard-won shelter of accessible care, dealing immense harm far beyond college campuses.
Small hometowns like mine in rural Arkansas will absorb this blow along with Black and Hispanic communities in the poorest city blocks and parts of town tourists avoid. Many aspiring doctors who understand the pain in these communities and who are called to return home and tend to their own will be denied the opportunity to pursue a medical degree and serve their communities.
People who need health care the most trust doctors who look like them and avoid those who don’t. We know this to be true, which is why racial representation in health care has become a focus for many leading medical schools, not just historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Yet in the name of equity for the most privileged students in our country — white and Asian collegians — we are compounding inequities for Black and Hispanic students and their communities of origin. Make no mistake: This is going to hurt the most vulnerable among us.
With race removed from the college admissions equation, I wonder where my own dreams would have died. I worked hard in my poor public school, determined to help people like my own hardworking father who died too young without adequate health care. Yet I had no legacy connection in the Ivy Leagues, no prep school background, no glowing recommendation from a local alum.
Without affirmative action, would I have been admitted to Harvard, compared with white applicants with more polished and privileged pedigrees? Would I have become a Rhodes Scholar and an AIDS researcher who went on to hold 11 patents? Would I be leading a mission-minded medical school? I can only imagine.
My life’s calling is caring for the underserved. Public service, not personal advancement, motivates me and shapes the lens through which I see the world. As president of Meharry Medical College, I fight an uphill battle of inequities every day, alongside my equally committed colleagues. At Meharry and the three other HBCU medical schools, we teach students how to enter their own storms alongside the struggling, with compassionate eyes that see far beyond presenting symptoms.
Since the Reconstruction era, roughly 100 HBCUs have existed to educate Black students pursuing an education in post-slavery America. Graduating preeminent leaders of every generation, HBCUs hold an esteemed position in American history. Applications at HBCUs nationwide have surged in recent years from minority students seeking campuses where they feel known and welcomed.
California’s 1996 affirmative action ban paints an ominous picture of what we can expect in the years to come. We anticipate HBCU admissions numbers to continue to rise, as Black and Hispanic students avoid applying to predominantly white universities and pursue degrees at HBCUs instead. At first read, this might look like good news, but this shift will be detrimental to the Black students HBCUs were born to serve, as fewer will graduate from top schools or with advanced degrees under mounting competition in our already selective admissions process.
This is potentially a step toward resegregating college campuses, and thus a problem for all socially aware institutions. While many falsely assume that HBCU campuses lack diversity, that’s a major misconception, as 24 percent of HBCU students identified as non-Black in 2020. With the elimination of affirmative action, a real possibility exists of Black students losing their places to white or Asian candidates. Beyond flying in the face of our educational justice mission, this would trickle down to the patients seeking providers who look like them, who inspire trust.
As a medical school leader, my greatest hope is that when the full human, social and economic consequences of this ruling become apparent, it will not be too late to change course. This single decision has eliminated decades of progress, with more hanging in the balance.
Meharry and other HBCUs exist to pursue precisely what the Supreme Court’s ruling negates: a society in which diversity and representation are upheld and championed as beneficial to us all. Higher education institutions must now grapple with their own missions and legacies, carrying the responsibility of ensuring equality in admissions and investing in a more just society.
Indignation is in order. We all, as citizens and voters, owe it to our fellow Americans and the very fabric of our nation to demand better.
Dr. James E.K. Hildreth, president and CEO, Meharry Medical College. In February, Hildreth testified in front of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee about the need to increase the diversity of doctors in the workforce.